The Prime Minister has been accused of attempting to rush the decision on whether to intervene in Syria.

Mr Clarke appeared to suggest that the Americans were putting pressure on the Government to hold a vote.

"We did not get a majority because of the trauma of the Iraq War," he told Channel 4 News. "The Americans wanted us to make this vote very quickly, We actually said we could have another vote later before action if people wanted.

"But people were so scarred by the experience of Iraq we did not manage to get across to enough of our people that we were not repeating the gross error of Iraq, and then Ed Miliband pulled most of the Labour Party out."

Mr Clarke added: “I think what we were doing – a targeted response to actually stop the regime being tempted to use chemical weapons again and to reduce their capacity to do so and then [get] out, was fine, but we did not have time to get a good majority.”

Mr Clarke missed the vote for family reasons.

Following Mr Cameron’s Commons defeat, Barack Obama, the US President, decided to delay his plans for military action and is consulting the US Congress.

His disclosure came as it emerged that Mr Cameron and Mr Obama will not hold a formal meeting at a summit in Russia this week, in what some people suggested was a snub because of the Prime Minister’s handling of the Syrian crisis.

By contrast, the US president will use the G20 summit in St Petersburg to hold formal bilateral meetings with leaders including President François Hollande of France, who is still considering backing the US in attacking Syria over the Assad regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

The Prime Minister on Wednesday continued to put pressure on Mr Obama to act, suggesting that the Syrian people face “Armageddon” if the US does not intervene. Mr Cameron told MPs: “If no action is taken following this appalling use of chemical weapons, you have to ask yourself what sort of Armageddon are the Syrian people going to be facing?”